Valuing Ecosystem Services: An Answer for China’s Watersheds?

Lila Buckley – September 11, 2007 – 5:00am

China Watch Home About China Watch

Government officials and researchers in China are increasingly trying to solve the economic piece of the nation’s environmental puzzle. Policy suggestions include subsidies for technologies that save both energy and money, taxation schemes that provide financial disincentives for polluters, and funding mechanisms that support ecosystem conservation. The latter approach—financing conservation—is particularly crucial to China’s future stability, says Dr. Liu Guihuan, who has spent her career at the Ecology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning searching for economically viable solutions to ecosystem protection.

According to Liu, the primary obstacle to ecosystem protection in China is not the cost of protection itself, but how this cost is allocated. “It is always cheaper to protect ecosystems than to have to rebuild and restore them once they are destroyed. But it is a question of who is paying those costs,” she observes. Liu argues that protecting China’s ecosystems requires putting the burden of payment on the appropriate resource users.

Protecting watersheds—Dr. Liu’s research focus—is a case in point. Liu and her colleagues point to the many benefits intact watersheds provide beyond supplying humans and wildlife with water. These so-called “ecosystem services” include soil and water purification, habitat for biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. “The beauty of healthy watersheds is that these services are provided for free, and indefinitely,” she notes. But as with any free public resource, ecosystem services are prone to overexploitation and degradation by some users, making the services unavailable to others. By the same token, “costly protection and restoration efforts by some are usually enjoyed by others who do not pay for them,” Liu adds.

Full Story